


The Tides of Time

by MournfulSeverity



Series: International Wizarding School Championship Fics [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24733720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MournfulSeverity/pseuds/MournfulSeverity
Summary: With the theft of a time turner and only one thought in mind, Severus returns to a time before everything went so very wrong, a time when Lily was still alive. He can only hope it's enough to stop Lord Voldemort before Severus' life falls apart...again.
Relationships: Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape
Series: International Wizarding School Championship Fics [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616080
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	The Tides of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: JKR owns everything, even though she doesn't deserve to.
> 
> This fic was originally written for the final round of IWSC, but in the short time it took me to write it, my ideas expanded far beyond one chapter. Oops. I can't guarantee that an update will come too quickly as I'm having surgery here soon and this isn't my priority, but for the moment, enjoy.

** No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." - C.S. Lewis **

* * *

Severus stood on the perfect concrete of the walkway. The perfect concrete that led to a perfect house and a perfect family. A perfection he could never dream of obtaining or had ever been allowed. Such incredible things had always evaded him, resting in the happiness of others rather than himself. Here, he stood in it again. He stood in a town that he was not welcome, bringing information that was even more controversial. As he swung the white, perfectly painted gate inward, stepping towards the door that held the most perfect thing of all, all he could feel was fear.

What if he lost her, _again_?

That thought had taunted his every decision in the days prior to this moment. It underlined his every decision, from his wonderings of if he'd added enough honey to his tea to the paralyzing, ever eclipsing fear, that without this warning he was coming to give, there would be no winning this war. Even this, he knew, was not a guarantee. But his steps carried him onward anyway.

He wondered, as he'd walked, if things had always been this way, if the perfection of Godric's Hollow had seeped into it's surroundings. The chirping of summer birds suddenly seemed louder, more cheerful, welcoming him into their world sixteen years in the past. The leaves hanging from the trees around him seemed more crisp in color than he'd ever seen a tree capable of, the green of them more vibrant, _and he wondered._ Had his life as a soldier, his own gray existence, muddied the world around him? Was it hope that allowed these things long past to surge to life once more? Or was he simply delirious? Severus feared it was the third, but perhaps he needed a little bit of insanity to do what he came here for.

The pounding of his fist on the wooden door echoed in the space around him and he heard life begin to birth from behind it, heard the shuffle of footsteps as someone approached. Heard the click of a lock and the gentle sigh of hinges. Perhaps it was a hope the door was opened with, curiosity. He was here to destroy it. To destroy it like he did so many other things.

When it opened he was met with an intake of breath, the letters that had so nearly fallen from her in the form of greeting now muffled by her own surprise.

It was his face, he knew, that had given her pause. Perhaps if he'd been here sixteen years earlier, her response would have been the same, but Severus imagined her face would have been lined with indignation then, frozen lips that refused to turn upwards into a smile. This was something else. Confusion. A confusion, he assumed, came from the lines in his face and the defeated hunch of his stature. Lines that came with nearly two decades of age she had never seen herself. Lines that weren't erased by the time turner he had used to come here.

"Ms. Evans," he greeted with an incline of his head. His mouth was suddenly parched, the words difficult to form. It had been so long since he had said them. So long since he had _seen_ anything but the erised reflection of her. Now, all he could give was a half-hearted formality, his consciousness far too focused on keeping him from fainting.

The words he came to say would be painful, difficult for the both of them. It wouldn't be an apology that had been a long time coming.

"Severus," Lily greeted finally with a hesitation similar to his own. She remained rooted to the spot, not having moved to allow him to step inside, but at least she hadn't slammed the door in his face.

"I'm afraid there is something we need to discuss. May I?" His words drifted, the unsaid question suspended between them. He wasn't sure how he had said any of it. He knew only that his heart was beating much too painfully inside his chest, slowly thumping its way through his skin and soon enough he would bare it all to her. To this woman that he had loved all these years. Somehow, despite that, he remained upright.

She didn't reply immediately and he could see it in her eyes. He didn't need occlumency to tell him that she was conflicted. Confused. _Curious._

"Erm…" she said a moment later, stepping to the side. "Yeah, yeah." Lily shook her head, smiling as she allowed him entrance. He took it. He had waited far too many years, he wouldn't grant a moment more.

He listened to the door close behind him as his gaze fell across the interior. He'd only seen it once, though he wasn't sure that that even counted. The home had been blasted apart along with everything inside it. It had been more debris than a home and standing inside it now — while it was still in one piece — felt like some place else entirely.

"Tea?" Lily asked, to which he quickly shook his head. It was, in that moment, equivalent to small talk. A drink to which they could pour inside their awkward gazes and uncomfortable silences. Something to occupy their fingers and their lips until the words somehow seemed easier to speak. He hated small talk and he hated the idea of that even more, even if he would have accepted the comfort that it could bring.

"You're alone, I assume?"

His words caused her to grip the side of her trousers, the pocket in which she held her wand. Severus nearly blurted that he wasn't here to murder her, but rather to save her from just that. Somehow he didn't think the words would be welcome or convincing. He forced a husky, unpracticed laugh instead.

"No, I simply meant that I didn't expect James to take well to my presence and it's a distraction I'm not in the mood for."

"No," she said in agreement, the twitch of her lip just barely hidden beneath her relief. "He wouldn't. I'm alone."

She guided him forwards, through the unnecessary extravagance that Severus knew was just a show, a Potter display. They reached a sitting room that was more of the same. Expensive knickknacks were held on high shelves, stored in front of books that Severus suspected had never been read. The room was nearly twice the size of the one in his own home and he felt what he hated to admit was a pang of jealousy.

Like so many other things that day, he pushed it away, choosing to seat himself inside the plush armchair that held more stuffing than it had any right to and a comfort he dreaded ever leaving.

He felt himself collapse inside it, the moment suddenly surreal. He allowed his barriers to lessen, for the doors inside his mind to creak open just a bit and let sunlight pour through the space and into the darkness that he otherwise carried inside him. But, he was here, and, more importantly, Lily sat across from him.

He felt the words crash inside of him, all of things he had wanted to say colliding with the things he could not. There were so many years of regrets, of apologies, and he felt himself crumble beneath the weight of them. If he waited any longer he wouldn't be able to do this at all.

"I'm not… I'm not Severus. Not the one that you know, anyway, or at least expect."

He thought of the books and movies they had devoured when they were younger. The tales of time travel and the convoluted explanations that they brought. Situations that he and Lily had always found funny, unrealistic, and now he was here, saying those same things. But he had one thing that the other stories did not.

Severus slid a finger beneath the color of his robes, pulling a gold chain and a spinning hourglass out from behind the buttons of his cloak. He dangled the time turner in front of himself where she could see, letting it glint beneath the sunlight.

"I wondered," was all she said and this he already knew. "What I don't understand, is why?"

The words he had replayed so many times, the explanations he had prepared were forgotten. They seemed easier to say aloud where she could hear them than they had in the confines of the Hogwarts dungeon where they echoed for only his ears.

"I'm here to warn you."

He was met with an intake of breath, a worried sigh, but she didn't try to stop him and he continued, no matter how unusual the words suddenly seemed.

"A year from now you'll fall pregnant — Potter's, of course — and it is because of this — and because of me — that Lord Voldemort pursues your family."

His eyes, which had been locked on her all the while, now fell. He couldn't face her as he said these things. The carpet beneath him was somehow more inviting. It, too, would be destroyed, but he had no qualms facing _it_.

"You...you don't—" Severus closed his lips, what came next was now trapped inside him. His voice had trembled with the letters as he felt a resurging of grief. A grief that he had never quite overcome, that had always swallowed him, engulfed him until he could no longer breathe beneath the burning of its flames and the toxicity of its smoke. And he was afraid, so afraid that the fire would return, that when he left here his words would have done no good and he would lose her. Again. And he would grieve. Again.

"Survive?" Her voice was calm, the gentle cascading of water that washed over him, soothing the parts of him that had been burned away. The single word was calm despite what they knew it both meant.

Maybe it wasn't real to her, how could it be? How could any danger really be a threat if it was held in a future with a family that didn't yet exist? Told to her by a man she no longer trusted?

Severus squeezed his eyes shut, one hand running across the furrows that had appeared along his forehead. This was somehow harder than he had initially thought.

"Neither does James," he said when he felt he had collected himself a bit more, choosing to use the man's first name rather than the one he had always known him by.

"And this...this child? What about it?"

Harry. It was the mention of him, the boy Severus had sworn to protect, that made him look at her again. Some part of Severus had told him that he was here for Lily. That he had come to save Lily. But, if that was the case, why hadn't he come sooner? Why had he waited until tonight? Waited until the Dark Lord's long anticipated return and the murder of Harry he had so narreowly succeeded in?

"He does."

Severus wanted to tell her things, to explain what would happen to her son. The family that would take him in, the abuse that Severus suspected, about Quirrell and Lockhart and all the things since and in-between. Traumas that could fill pages and pages of a book and would break even the most heartless mother's heart. But it would take too long and he didn't have the time.

It was those things that made him speak again before Lily could decide what to say. "He survives, but it is not a life that he deserves. He needs you… he needs his father."

"If this is true, if all of this is as you say… how do you expect us to prevent it?"

It was a valid question and it was one for which he had no true answer, only hopes. "Run. Hide. Go anywhere but here."

Lily looked away from him then, choosing to study the edges of her fingernails. She was quiet, lost in a thought she didn't voice and a part of him wished she still held his eye contact, that she offered him a window into those very things, but perhaps that's why her gaze had fallen in the first place.

"And what about James?" She asked finally, her face still downturned and her voice speculative. "What do I tell him? How do I make him believe that a man from the _future_ told me these things when I'm not even sure I believe it myself?"

There it was.

He wanted to grip her shoulders, wanted to shake her until she understood. This was a threat she had faced on the battlefield so many times before and so many times more before her death. A threat that tried to extinguish the existence of people like her, and wasn't that enough? But, no. Lily was too smart. Too inquisitive. A time turner and signs of his own aging could not be enough to convince her. He needed to give her more, but what that was he didn't yet know.

Instead he sighed, his voice suddenly tired as he spoke. "Tell him that you're afraid and that if he loves you, if he _really_ loves you, he'll go some place that the two — three — of you can't be found."

She faced him once more, her face different than it had been for the entirety of the conversation. It was almost as if she expected whatever spell she suspected he had hidden himself beneath to melt away, to reveal that he was Black or Lupin or perhaps even _Pettigrew_ and that this had all been some practical joke.

It was, Severus agreed, easier to believe and far less painful, but that was not the life either of them had known. Easy and painless were characteristics given to others besides them, and maybe that alone could be enough to convince her in the end. In that moment, he could do nothing more than hope.


End file.
